Careful breeding programme leads to low rates of absconding and improve gentleness of bees.

Using queen excluder helps to prevent absconding of newly installed bees, and trait selections.

Contributed by Brother williams

If you can keep the bees in a hive long enough for the queen to produce some brood, the bees almost always stay with the
brood - if it is in the larval stage. Larvae produce a pheromone known as
"juvenile pheromone" - sometimes referred to as "hormone"than pheromone. It is this pheromone that causes the colony to stay with the hive. The pheromone is not produced in sufficient amount by bees in the egg stage, and is not produced by bees in the pupal stage, so it is necessary to have
larvae present in the hive to hold the bees there.

When I catch a swarm, I take a piece of equipment called a "queen excluder", and cover the entrance to the hive, making sure the bees cannot leave the hive through other openings. This allows workers to forage freely, but will not let the queen - or drones - leave the hive.

This will keep the queen in the hive long enough to produce brood, which will help in keeping the colony in the hive. With the African bee, there is a characteristic of absconding as a survival mechanism. Although African bees do store surplus honey that may be used by the colony for food during times of drought or when there are no good sources of nectar available, the tendency of the African bee when confronted with a period of dearth is to simply leave the hive and find a more suitable area for foraging.

To ease this tendency would require a careful breeding program selecting stock that has lower absconding rates, then line-breeding these genetic lines for several honeybee-generations. The desired tendency (lower rate of absconding) may prove to be "recessive", and may have to be
continually selected in each breeding-generation.

This is the case with defensive behavior. Gentleness can be achieved through careful breeding programs, but is lost in the very first out-cross using non-selected stock;
it is a very recessive trait. Using a queen excluder is the simplest method
of handling this issue.

Do bees build brown combs?

How do combs become brown and stain honey?
Contributed by Brother Williams.

He says,
Honey will absorb both color and flavor from the comb it is stored in.
Bees that forage on the same blooms, but store the nectar/honey in different comb (light, freshly produced wax versus dark, old comb) will seemingly produce honey from two different sources.

This is not the case, as the honey in the dark comb will become darker by absorbing some of the stain from the old comb. Along with this color change comes a taste change as well. Old, dark colored comb has very little wax in it. It is dark because it has been used as brood-comb for several generations of brood.

When the bee is in the larval stage it goes through 6 stages of molt, where the larval skin is shed. after the new bee emerges following pupation, the nurse bees begin cleaning the now unoccupied cell to prepare it for the queen to use again to lay an egg in. The "cleaner bee" can only remove 3 - 4 of the molted shed-skins, so to keep the diameter of the cell at a size that is usable by the queen, the worker bees remove wax, rather than the molted skins.

This causes the comb to appear a little darker in color with each successive generation of brood that is produced in the comb,eventually becoming almost black. This is one reason for an 'off" taste in the honey. It was stored in cells that were lined with , essentially, dead bee-skins.

Eventually the cells will become unusable due to their ever-decreasing diameter. The cells will lose their shape-definition, and although the outside of the cell will still appear hexagonal, the inside will be round, with no definition to hexagonal angles.

Do bees build brown combs?

How do combs become brown and stain honey?
Contributed by Brother Williams.

He says,
Honey will absorb both color and flavor from the comb it is stored in.
Bees that forage on the same blooms, but store the nectar/honey in different comb (light, freshly produced wax versus dark, old comb) will seemingly produce honey from two different sources.

This is not the case, as the honey in the dark comb will become darker by absorbing some of the stain from the old comb. Along with this color change comes a taste change as well. Old, dark colored comb has very little wax in it. It is dark because it has been used as brood-comb for several generations of brood.

When the bee is in the larval stage it goes through 6 stages of molt, where the larval skin is shed. after the new bee emerges following pupation, the nurse bees begin cleaning the now unoccupied cell to prepare it for the queen to use again to lay an egg in. The "cleaner bee" can only remove 3 - 4 of the molted shed-skins, so to keep the diameter of the cell at a size that is usable by the queen, the worker bees remove wax, rather than the molted skins.

This causes the comb to appear a little darker in color with each successive generation of brood that is produced in the comb,eventually becoming almost black. This is one reason for an 'off" taste in the honey. It was stored in cells that were lined with , essentially, dead bee-skins.

Eventually the cells will become unusable due to their ever-decreasing diameter. The cells will lose their shape-definition, and although the outside of the cell will still appear hexagonal, the inside will be round, with no definition to hexagonal angles.

No more absconding

African bees are known for absconding, this is a very big problem in beekeeping becuase bees need time in a beehive before becoming productive.
Of course there are various causes of absconding such as poor hive condition, poor hive management, limited nectar sources, hash environment conditions, limited space in the hive and many others.

African bees are funny, they don't value the time and care we give them; they just abscond anytime they want.

A few days ago, i captured a big swarm which was desperately hanging on a tree and installed it in a new hive. Immediately i supplied the bees with sugar syrup as first aid relief and to show caring on them.

But just after two days even before eating all the syrup, they absconded and this is one of the reasons why we can't easily buy packed bees in uganda and install them in hives like beekeepers do in USA and Europe: our bees abscond so easily!

Therefore the best way to control absconding after installing the bees is to cage the queen but again it is not easy to see the queen especially in a big swarm. And when you try to turn the bees around in search for a queen, again the queen may escape in the process and fly away causing all bees to follow her leaving the hive empty!

I have got an idea of making a net sack using old mosquito nets. This net will help to wrap around the hive after installing the bees for a period of more than a week or two in order to force the bees to get used to their new home.

I have chosen the net because it will allow good air circulation though the bees will not be able to fly but i will be providing them with sugar syrup which will stimulate their enzymes to produce wax and build combs which will allow the queen lay eggs. I think when these bees have something in place, they will less likely to abscond.

Using a queen excluder could be another solution. With this, the workers can fly out freely in search for nectar and learning about the environment. It's very unfortunate we don't use queen excluders in our KTB hives.

Normally african bees are used to moving themselves into a new hive at their own convinience.

It sucks to find newly installed bees have left the hive...without valueing the effort and care you spent on them.